A leaked “options analysis” is doing the rounds of UK blogs, I picked it up at Samizdata, where seconds poster Ed says:

Once again, the Government decide what the next authoritarian measure is and then try to find convincing arguments to back it up. That document is truly scary.

I couldn’t have put it better myself.

Read the document, and notice how it lays out options according to how popular they will be and how likely they are to encourage “rejection”. If enough people read this docuement, the country won’t be fooled, I hope we all reject the card with equal violence.

The document “Northern Rock Summary” has been removed from Scribd

This content was removed at the request of copyright agent J. Afia of Schillings o/b/o Northern Rock, plc

For more information, please send questions to support@scribd.com

I said I didn’t want to use this blog to moan, but having moaned once on the topic of censorship, libel and Schillings the above quote (source) demonstrating the chilling effect of copyright on free speech seems entirely justified.

Guido explains the importance of the document concerned in his post “Northen Rock Nationalised“.

 Under section 1(1) of the Defamation Act 1996, a secondary publisher is given a
defence if:
(b) he took reasonable care in relation to its publication; and
(c) he did not know, and had no reason to believe, that what he did caused or contributed to the publication of a defamatory statement.

…

we noted that the section 1 defence may cause problems, and that it raised issues that should be examined further. The defence is narrow. It applies only to those who are unaware that the publication contained
a statement with a defamatory meaning, in the sense that it would make reasonable people think worse of the claimant. There is no defence for secondary publishers who genuinely but mistakenly believe that the material is true, privileged or fair comment.

Holy mother of God, the Fasthost’s censorship debacle worsens:

On my article about Alisher Usmanov which so incensed his lawyers Schillings, let me ask this question. Has anybody seen an argument posted or published from any credible source to argue that what I say about Usmanov is untrue?

I ask the question because one of the edits to this log my webhost made at Schillings’ behest was to say that my claim was “regarded as false by many people”. I have altered that edit, because there is no justification for such a claim. I have yet to see evidence of anybody, not one solitary person, arguing that I am wrong about Usmanov, other than his lawyers. Who are these “Many people”, and why are they peculiarly silent?

I am very sympathetic to my webhost having to change things for Schillings, but not to the extent of altering things to become defamatory of me!!!

Posted by craig on 3:14 PM 14/09/07 under Uzbekistan

Source

Winston Smith is alive and well and living in Gloucester. Utterly irresponsible.

“In this case, we examined a website for potentially defamatory material and communicated to the customer that they had indeed breached the terms and conditions for Fasthosts Internet hosting.”

Would someone please pull the plug on this pathetic institution?

More on Fasthosts at the Register.

Links and quotes added 22/09/2007.

No Government shall be permitted to initiate any action or pass any
rule whatsoever in relation to the Internet, except to permit
communication by a Government to the public according to the Internet’s
normal protocols or to clarify how the rules of the land will apply to
Internet communication and commerce affecting those within the
Government’s jurisdiction.

I posted the above, half jokingly and half seriously to the ORG discuss list in response to a post on the Dialogue Forum on Internet Rights’ forthcoming meeting. It is obvious that no Government could agree to such a statement because so many groups out there see the Internet as some unique and special evil and there are votes in promises to do something about it.

Comment moderation was a huge drain on my enthusiasm for blogging in the past but hopefully a move to market leading Word Press will give me access to some kick-ass spam prevention wizardry…. but I have no idea what that might be - yet.

I also doubted the mental healthiness of pouring every frustration out onto the internet regardless of whether anyone was listening and without any regard to whether or not I was making a contribution. I had thought this exercise cathartic, and maybe it is, but perhaps there are better forms of catharsis.

So, what are my goals?

1. Assess Word Press as a platform and get to know it. I first promised to do this for Sonia at Hearts Cafe in Ollantaytambo but that seems a long way away now and she hasn’t been in touch, but I also need to do this for my own commercial purposes.
2. Have an outlet for posing questions and reporting answers in a careful and diplomatic fashion that conforms to my needs, for example, polishing up my contributions to Wikipedia or to Open Source technology projects are things I can put into the public domain that are useful, if only to random users of Google.
3. Have a virtual mental place that is mine, a real fourth place that centralises bookmarks and tools I used regularly and keeps me, my friends and my colleagues updated - without submitting to data rape by Facebook.